Launched in July 2017, BioMedCAS was developed by Liaison in partnership with biomedical science program directors. BioMedCAS brings admissions offices an improved way to recruit, enroll and admit best-fit students while saving money and better allocating staff resources each admissions cycle. Participation is restricted to institutions that offer one or more PhDs in biomedical sciences, but participants may accept research master’s applications through BioMedCAS.

Compared with its inaugural cycle in 2018/2019, BioMedCAS posted the following results in 2019/2020:

114% increase in female applicants.

47% growth in the size of the applicant pool.

34% average application growth.

30% increase in the number of unique applicants.

Matthew Brandon, associate director of graduate studies at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine, was an early adopter of BioMedCAS: “Before BioMedCAS, our admissions system was not flexible,” he says. “In fact, we had to alter our process to better align with what the system was capable of facilitating. Now that we’re a member of the CAS, our admissions officers, faculty members and prospective students are seeing time and effort savings. I’m excited to see our program promoted far and wide as more programs join the CAS.”

“We were very pleased with the growth of BioMedCAS but we’re even more excited about the phenomenal addition of new programs. We’re excited to welcome Marshall University, Stowers Institute for Medical Research, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, University of Mississippi Medical Center, City of Hope National Medical Center and Temple University to the CAS community,” says Judy Chappelear, Liaison’s director of association partnerships.

She continued: “The great thing about the platform is that the benefits of membership increase as membership itself increases, and applicants, who often apply to multiple programs from coast to coast, stand to gain as well. By its very nature, success begets success. We all succeed when we join forces, particularly in a field as specialized as the biomedical sciences.”

Dr. Daniel C. Jupiter, assistant dean for recruitment to the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Texas Medical Branch, saw the promise of the BioMedCAS application from the very beginning: “Being able to focus on the content of our application, rather than the design of it, has helped us collect the information that is integral to making strategic admissions decisions. With BioMedCAS, we benefit from application interface best practices while showcasing our uniqueness as an institution. We’re looking forward to using WebAdMIT™, its powerful administrative backend, to process applications to our basic science programs, as we’ve already seen with our public health applications that the system is powerful and user friendly.”